University of Maryland mechanical engineer serves as auditor for battery manufacturers around the world Michael Pecht He frequently tours the immaculate manufacturing site. They resemble “the cleanest hospitals imaginable, semiconductor-type cleanliness,” he says. But he’s also seen a lot of the opposite. Pecht, who has audited dozens of battery factories, estimates he has found workers pouring water or smoking cigarettes next to production lines, allowing particles and contaminants to get into battery components and compromise their performance and safety.
Unfortunately, such scenes are just the tip of the iceberg. Pecht said he has seen poorly assembled lithium-ion batteries with little or no safety features, or worse, outright counterfeits. These counterfeits can be homemade or manufactured in factories and pretend to be from well-known global brands. They have been found on scooters, vape pens, electric bikes, and other devices, causing fires and explosions with deadly consequences.
The prevalence of counterfeits is on the rise and is a growing concern in the global battery market. In fact, New York City has banned the sale of uncertified batteries in recent years after so many fires caused by defective batteries, including those that power many of the electric bikes used by the city’s delivery bikers. The city is now installing its first e-bike battery swapping station as an alternative to home charging. The idea is to persuade delivery drivers to replace dead batteries with new ones, rather than charging them at home, where a degraded battery can pose a fire hazard.
The dangers of counterfeit batteries may be underestimated compared to certified batteries, where public safety risks may be exaggerated. “For these counterfeits, it’s probably an order of magnitude worse,” Pecht said.
There are several ways to create counterfeit batteries. Scammers often relabel old or scrap batteries made by legitimate manufacturers like LG, Panasonic, and Samsung and sell them as new. “It’s very easy to create a new label and apply it,” Pecht says. To command a higher price, they sometimes relabel real batteries with labels that claim more capacity than the cells actually have.
But Pecht said the most prevalent fake batteries are homemade. Lithium-ion batteries are so easy to build that counterfeiters can do it in makeshift environments. Anodes, cathodes, separators, electrolytes, and other electrical elements are enough to allow battery manufacturers to operate cells capable of night flight.
Nothing can be as safe and reliable as a tested and certified battery. Counterfeiters neglect safety mechanisms that prevent problems that can lead to fires. For example, certified batteries are built to thwart thermal runaway, a chain reaction that begins with an electrical short circuit or mechanical damage to the battery and leads to uncontrollable temperature increases.
Judy Jeevarajan, deputy president and executive director of the Houston-based Electrochemical Safety Laboratory, part of Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Research Institute, led a study of fake batteries in 2023. For the study, Jeevarajan and colleagues collected both real and fake lithium batteries from three manufacturers (withheld names) and pushed them to the limit to demonstrate the differences.
One of the tests, called destructive physical analysis, involved dismantling a small cylindrical battery. This made the difference in quality immediately apparent. Genuine high-quality examples included thick plastic insulation at the top and bottom of the cylinder, as well as tape placed axially and radially to hold the battery’s “jelly roll” core. However, illegal examples had thin insulation, no insulation at all, and little or no safety tape.
“This is a major concern from a safety perspective, as the original product was made with specific features that mitigated the risks associated with the high energy density offered by lithium-ion batteries,” Jeevarajan says.
Jeevarajan’s team also overcharged the battery and caused an electrical short. Legally tested and certified batteries, like the iconic 18650 lithium-ion cylinder, counter these threats with internal safety features such as a positive temperature coefficient, which increases electrical resistance as the material heats up, and a current interrupt device (CID), which automatically disconnects the battery’s electrical circuit if internal pressure increases too much. The genuine lithium batteries used in Jeevarajan’s tests had the best insulation and internal structure. It also has a high-quality CID to prevent overcharging, reducing the risk of fire. Other cells didn’t have it.
Jeevarajan says it’s clear that great care was taken to ensure that the counterfeit label had exactly the same shade and markings as the original manufacturer’s label, even though the battery lacked any safety components.
How to spot counterfeit batteries
Counterfeiters are very skilled at duplicating manufacturer labels, so it’s difficult to know for sure whether the lithium batteries that come with consumer electronics or the replacements you can buy on sites like eBay and Amazon are actually authentic. It’s not just individual consumers who are suffering from this problem. Pecht said he knows of cases in which device manufacturers purchased batteries that appeared to be made by LG or Samsung for their devices but did not verify that the batteries were genuine.
“You can’t tell by visual inspection,” Jeevarajan said. However, companies do not need to dismantle cells to conduct due diligence. “You can determine if a safety device is missing inside a cell by running a test to confirm its presence,” she says. An easy way to do this, Pecht says, is to have a standard of comparison handy. A known legitimate battery whose label, performance, and other characteristics can be compared to the suspect cell. His team will look inside the battery and even do a CT scan to make sure it’s built correctly.
Of course, most consumers don’t have the equipment on hand to test the reliability of every rechargeable battery in their home. So Pecht advises thinking about what types of batteries and devices you use to shop wisely. The big, high-capacity batteries in smartphone units and electric cars aren’t the problem. Strict quality control is carried out and the possibility of it being a fake is extremely low. He said counterfeits are most likely to be found in cylindrical batteries found in small, inexpensive devices.
“These are primarily used as energy and power source for various portable applications such as cameras, camcorders, mobile phones, power banks, power tools, electric bicycles, electric scooters, etc.,” adds Jeevarajan. “Most of these products are sold with part numbers that indicate equivalency to the manufacturer’s part number. Electric vehicles are a very high-tech market, and cells and batteries of poor quality or of questionable origin are unacceptable.”
Pecht said the problem with combating the scourge of counterfeit batteries is that new rules tend to focus on consumer behavior, such as preventing e-bike batteries from being improperly stored or charged in apartments. Safe handling and charging are certainly important, but even more important is eliminating counterfeit products from the supply chain. “They want to blame the user for overcharging or for doing it wrong,” he says. “But in my opinion, the problem is the cells themselves.”
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